


wait for me in the sky

by xiomarisol



Category: Runaways (TV 2017)
Genre: 1x01 AU, Attempted Rape, Character Study, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Protective Nico, but there's gay undertones, more friendship than romantic, nico knows taekwondo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-10
Updated: 2020-01-10
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:27:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22195534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xiomarisol/pseuds/xiomarisol
Summary: There are drawbacks, Karolina and Nico know, to being the girl everyone looks at but nobody ever really sees.-or, if nico had found karolina at the party instead of chase. featuring protective nico, mutual pining, friendship, and introspection.
Relationships: Karolina Dean & Nico Minoru, Karolina Dean/Nico Minoru
Comments: 5
Kudos: 189





	wait for me in the sky

**Author's Note:**

> TW: attempted rape. nothing graphic, just like what it was on the show, but there is talk about it.
> 
> title from golden by harry styles because

There are drawbacks, Karolina knows, to being the girl everyone looks at but nobody ever really _sees._

A smile is a costume, too. The satin of her lips stretches tight over her pearly white teeth, their shine hiding the loneliness that seeps under the surface of her skin. There are sacrifices that come with being the daughter of a well-known church leader, and most of them are not the type of sacrifices that a teenage girl is prepared to make.

So, tonight, she chooses to rebel. Karolina feels the butterflies dancing in her stomach as she swipes pink lip gloss over her lips. As she shimmies into a skirt the church elders would scoff at. Karolina is a pretty girl, that much she knows. Looks are important when you’re the Gen A messiah for the Church of Gibborim, and that’s not a position that Leslie Dean takes lightly. Karolina’s blonde hair, blue eyes, and long legs place her perfectly within the boundaries of western beauty. It simply is.

People look at her. When she walks into the biggest back to school party in Brentwood, people look at her. Boys, and to her surprise, some girls, lock eyes with her as soon as she walks into the party. Whispers follow where she walks, many about the “weird church girl” walking into the party. She tries not to let it bother her. Tonight, she is not Karolina Dean, ambassador of the church. Tonight she is seventeen and she’s at a party and she wants to _dance._

Her eyes sweep the dance floor, trying to see if somebody she knows is here, although she knows the truth: Karolina dean doesn’t _know_ anyone. She simply exists, weaving in between study groups and adults from church without anyone she can truly call a friend. She notices a few people: Nikita from math class, who gives her a quick wave but looks back to her own friends before Karolina can even _think_ about making her way over to them, Gwen from photography, and Nico minoru, who she used to call a friend but now can barely call an acquaintance.

And, of course, that bathroom interaction. Allergies.

(If Karolina didn’t call Nico a friend before, she definitely can’t after that mess.)

But Nico also knows that there are drawbacks to being the girl everyone looks at but nobody ever really _sees._

Her makeup is a costume, too. When she walks into a room, people stare. It’s hard not to, when your entire aesthetic is based off people being scared of you. The black clothes, the purple lipstick, the laced up combat boots, they make Nico feel like a _warrior._ She’s been through hell in the past two years, and the clothes make it known to the world that she’s in a perpetual state of mourning. Whether she’s still mourning Amy or she’s moved on to mourning the person she used to be, she doesn’t know.

Nico has pushed away every person she could ever call a friend. The therapist her parents contracted called it a defense mechanism. Nico couldn’t care less what it’s called. All she knows is she made sacrifices to avoid being hurt again and now she’s too far gone to care. Sometimes. But tonight, she’d started driving and ended up at the biggest party in Brentwood, so maybe she does care a little bit.

Nico leans against the wall and tries to imagine what her life would be like if Amy hadn’t died. Would she be over there, on the dance floor, drinking like a normal seventeen year old kid? Maybe she’d be at the DJ booth, passing around a joint with the stoners. Maybe she’d still be here, stuck in the corner of the living room like a big fat loser, but her sister would be right next to her making fun of all the other kids for being posers. It’s not worth thinking about.

(And whether she’d be over there, dancing up next to Karolina Dean, who she used to call a friend… yeah, that’s not worth thinking about either).

Drugs are bad. This, Karolina knows to be true. So when a little red and blue pill gets thrust into her hands by one of the lacrosse players, she knows better than to take it. Instead, she fills her cup with a little bit of lukewarm beer and pretends to nurse it for a little bit, before setting it down on the counter while she goes to dance.

At this point in the night, people are beginning to get messy. There’s a game of flip cup going on to her right and two girls are grinding and making out to her left and she’s trying not to stare at them but she’s never seen anything like it in person before. If she’s seen it when she was younger, searching up “girls kissing” on youtube like a prepubescent boy, she tries not to think about.

(If she searched it up after getting weird butterflies during her first ever sleepover with Nico… well, if she’s going to think about that she’s going to need to finish that beer).

Nico’s ready to ditch this joint. Or whatever the kids are saying these days. People watching was fun for a while, but you can only be a wallflower for so long before you realize that people are painfully predictable. Kids are trashed, and making out, and this game of flip cup is getting worse by the second, and Karolina Dean is passed out on the living room floor—shit. Karolina Dean is passed out on the living room floor.

This, too, should be predictable. church girl doesn’t know her limits at what is possibly the very first party she has ever attended. She drinks a little too much. Except Karolina had been pretending to nurse the same beer all night (Nico had noticed), and she definitely hadn’t taken enough alcohol to be tipsy, let alone passing out drunk.

Karolina Dean and Nico Minory used to be friends. It was during the times of sleepovers and matching Taylor Swift shirts and playing uno in the basement, but still, they used to be friends. and because Nico doesn’t have many of those anymore, and because it still counts for something, Nico starts to make her way over to her.

Before that can happen, however, the game of flip cup goes horribly south. After being beaten by the opposing player, Tyler from the lacrosse team decides to flip the table they’re playing on completely over with an exclamation of “try to beat that, bitch!” This is also predictable, except it happens right as Nico is trying to shoulder her way through them, and two of the cups end up conveniently flipping over onto her.

She’s wet and pissed and she smells like beer, but she’s on a mission to get Karolina off that grimey floor, so she keeps moving. if she flips everyone off and sends them a glare that would send satan scurrying to heaven on the way there, oh well. they deserved it. By the time she gets to the living room, however, Karolina is no longer on the floor and the spot where she used to be is occupied by a lesbian couple who looks just about ready to start scissoring on the dance floor. For a second, Nico considers it an “oh well, you tried” moment and starts to walk away. Maybe someone else got to her first.

But then Nico considers: maybe someone else got to her first. And she groans, because as much as she wants to not be involved in high school drama, Karolina is still a pretty girl passed out at a party and Nico would never forgive herself if something happened to her. It’s not about Karolina. It’s just girl code. (or, really, decent human being code, but Nico’s starting to learn that you can’t expect men to follow those kinds of guidelines).

So, begrudgingly, she taps one of the horny ass lesbians on the shoulder. If looks could kill, Nico would be six feet under by now, but lucky for her, they can’t, so instead she asks them, “Hey, my… my friend, blonde, like six feet tall, she was here like a second ago, on the floor. did you see where she went?”

“Her boyfriend and his friend picked her up. they took her downstairs.”

At those words, Nico’s heart begins to beat hard. Because Nico and Karolina are not friends, not anymore, but maybe Nico keeps up with her enough to know Karolina doesn’t have a boyfriend. If that fact had made her happy once upon a time, that’s not important now. The point is some guys she doesn’t know have carried Karolina downstairs and Nico needs to find her before she becomes a smiling face on the side of a milk carton.

Nico can barely murmur a “thanks” before the girls are back to eating each other’s faces off and Nico is sprinting downstairs, pissing off a lot of people in the process of shouldering herself through the mass of bodies.

When she makes it downstairs she sees a single wooden door, only a crack open with two bulking white guys standing over a bed. Her fight or flight instincts kick in and every logical part of her is screaming at her to get help and come back. She’s five foot two and barely breaking a hundred pounds and this is a bad idea, but there’s a girl on that bed and of course it doesn’t help that that girl is Karolina and despite it all Nico still _cares._

So she’s swinging the door open as the two guys, who she recognizes from the lacrosse team, turn around quickly to face her.

“What the fuck are you doing in here?”

Nico’s eyes flit quickly between them, the bed, and the door, thinking up her next move. “That’s my friend. I’m taking her home.”

“Like hell you are,” one of them says as the other replies, “Weird church girl doesn’t have any friends.”

Nico takes another step forward, enough to see Karolina behind them, passed out with her skirt bunched around her hips. Her eyes dart quickly upwards then, red hot with rage, to the two boys. Their eyes are just as quick. They recognize her anger. One of them takes a step towards her while the other takes a step backwards to guard the door. “I suggest you get out of here and forget you saw anything.”

“Unless, of course.” the taller one winks, “you’d want to join.”

It’s a threat. Nico knows this. She’s not the kind of girl guys like him look at, at least not for the same reasons they look at girls like Karolina. What they’re doing, it’s not about sex, it’s about power. And he wants her to know that in this situation, she has none.

A part of Nico considers, of course, stepping out of the room. At least for long enough to call the police and let them deal with this instead of putting herself in danger. But then she sees Karolina, still unconscious and decides she can’t risk the few minutes it would take for the police to get here. When she makes no move to leave, and instead moves closer to the bed in an attempt to wake Karolina up, the boy next to the door closes the door behind him.

What they’re not prepared for, however, is her twelve years of training and black belt in taekwondo. She’ll have to thank Tina later for forcing her into lessons when she was little. But right now, she hits the closer one with a spinning backfist to the face. The impact of it is unexpected, which sends him spiraling to the ground clenching his broken nose. Her own hand hurts like a bitch, and she worries that she might have broken a bone, but she has no time to mull over it.

The other boy moves forward, anger evident in his face, and Nico uses her uninjured hand to deliver a pincer hand to his throat. This stops him in his tracks, but only for a few seconds, before he’s back up and swinging an open palm at him with a “you crazy fucking bitch!”

He hits her quickly, but Nico barely feels the sting. They say adrenaline is the best anesthetic and they may be right. Nico has no time to think about it. Instead, she delivers a quick attack: a single axe kick to the collarbone, which, when combined with her heavy combat boots, results in an immediate snap.

“Fuck!” he yells, but Nico is hyper-focused on moving towards Karolina. She steps around his crumpled body and kneels next to Karolina on the bed.

“Karolina.” Nico half-yells, half-whispers into the blonde’s ear. “Karolina, please, we need to go.”

Nico tries to pull her away from the wrist, but Karolina is tall, and Nico is not particularly strong, and she can’t carry her and there’s only so long until the boys realize Nico is not unstoppable and they need to _go._ “You need to wake up, Karrie, because i can’t do this without you.”

At this, Karolina stirs, her eyes blinking open slowly. “Fuck, thank god, Karolina, we need to get out of here.”

“Nico?” Karolina makes eye contact with her as soon as her eyes are open, “What—where?”

Nico doesn’t have to answer the question. Instead, Karolina scans the room, looking at the two seething, injured boys on the floor, her skirt bunched around her hips, and Nico’s panicked stare above her own face. “Did—”

They share a glance. Nico wishes she could do more than just look at her sadly, but instead she gives a quick squeeze to one of Karolina’s hands. “Karolina, we really need to go.”

Karolina darts upwards but doesn’t let go of Nico’s hand. Instead, they run out the door together, ignoring the yells of “you better not say shit to anyone!” echoing behind them. Upstairs, the party is still in full swing, and nobody pays any mind to the limping girls making their way out of the party.

There are upsides, Karolina and Nico know, to being the girls everyone looks at but nobody ever really _sees._

Outside, the fresh air feels like a slap in the face. Both girls are out of breath, running on pure adrenaline, but there is an urgency to the situation that still feels potent, like a ticking bomb that could go off behind them at any moment. Nico doesn’t let herself breathe until Karolina is tucked safely into the passenger seat of her car. Karolina doesn’t take her first breath until, moments later, she’s dry heaving into a mcdonald’s bag that had been sitting on Nico’s dashboard.

Without thinking, Nico’s hand makes its way to Karolina’s hair and she pulls it back behind her neck. It’s clammy, Nico notices. She wonders if it’s a side effect of whatever those assholes put in Karolina’s drink, but she can’t think about it for too long, because Karolina’s dry heaves turn into sobs and holy shit, Nico is not equipped to handle this situation.

She takes the bag out of Karolina’s hands and chucks it out onto the outside pavement. She thinks, for a moment, about the planet and litter and whether a little seal is going to choke on her McChicken wrapper, but ultimately she thinks the seal would understand, given the circumstances.

Nico sits there, awkwardly rubbing Karolina’s back with one hand as she cries and using the other to fidget with her keys. Where will they go? Nico thinks, maybe, she should take Karolina home. maybe explain the situation to her mom, who could certainly protect her from those assholes. Yeah, the Church of Gibborim is creepy, but it has money and connections and power, and that’s what it takes to win cases like this. But then she thinks back to the Leslie Dean she knew when they were younger and thinks that may not be the best idea after all.

“Thank you.” Karolina chokes out after what feels like about ten minutes of crying.

“No,” Nico says, “I—it’s what anyone would’ve done.”

“Still, Nico.” There’s something about the way Karolina says her name, almost like an apology in and of itself, that makes Nico feel like sobbing. “If you hadn’t been there, I—I don’t even want to imagine what could have… that would’ve been my first.”

Suddenly, Nico’s crying, too. she doesn’t know exactly why, or maybe it should be obvious, but there’s something about hearing those words that makes her so fucking angry about the entire situation because _nobody_ deserves this but _especially_ not Karolina, who is good and sweet and sunshine in a bottle and all of the clichés Amy used to love reading about. She reaches up to swat her tears away, instead coming into contact with her own injured cheek, and flinches.

Karolina is quick to catch it, “Whoa. Are you okay?”

Before nico can say she’s fine, Karolina has a gentle hand under her chin and is tilting her head to the right, seeing where a purpuling bruise is already forming on her left cheek. “What happened?”

And because Nico and Karolina used to be friends, and because, despite everything, Nico _knows_ Karolina, she can see the gears turning in her head. and because they’re turning in a direction Nico doesn’t like, one that implies that Karolina is starting to feel a little guilty, Nico quickly responds with a dry chuckle, “You should see the other guy.”

“That’s not funny, Nico.”

“I know.”

“You could’ve really gotten hurt.”

“I know.” Nico places a hand over Karolina’s. “I’m just really glad you’re okay.”

She had forgotten, for a second, the unraveling of events that had led to this conversation. But at those words, Karolina remembers. She remembers the dancing and the blurriness and the mattress under her bare thighs and waking up to Nico’s blurry face. And she remembers that there are still so many holes she needs to fill. “I… what happened, Nico? I don’t… I was dancing, and then I woke up and you were there.”

Nico takes a deep breath. “I don’t know that much more than you do. But I saw you pass out and followed you down. I—I think I got there before they could… do much of anything.”

The blonde lets out a sigh of relief.

“I'm sorry, Karolina. I wish I could give you more answers.” Nico worries her bottom lip between her teeth, “And hey, no pressure, but… if you wanted to… do something about this, i could go with you.”

“Where would I even go?”

“The principal? Your mom? The police, even? I’ll go wherever you want to go. but only if you’re comfortable.”

“Okay.” Karolina says, crossing her arms defensively over her chest, “I want them to pay. For what they did. And… I want them to know that it’s not okay. If they’ve done it before, to other girls, I don’t want them to have the opportunity to do it again.”

“I agree.”

“But…” Karolina turns to look out the window, “Could we go tomorrow? Tonight… I just really want to sleep.”

“Of course, Karrie.” Nico ignores the way their childhood nickname slides so easily from her tongue and instead focuses on starting the engine, “Do you want me to take you home?”

“I—yeah, sure.”

But Nico quickly catches the doubt in the little space between her eyebrows, so instead she says, “We can drive to my house instead, and deal with this tomorrow… if that works for you.”

Karolina lets out a breath, “Yeah. Yeah. That works for me. Thanks, Nico, for everything.”

“Like I said, no need to thank me.” She means it, too, because right now, driving down LA’s most privileged streets with the prettiest girl on the planet, Nico feels like she should be the one thanking Karolina, maybe just for existing in her presence.

“No, I mean… for everything. I'm sorry i was so dismissive in the bathroom earlier. I'm just not used to people noticing that I’m… not as perfect as i make myself out to be. But you do.”

“I’ll always see you, Karrie.” Nico’s eyes dart over to where Karolina sits, eyes wide and open and kind facing her, and she can’t help but smile, despite the aching in her cheek and against the Amy-sized hole in her heart.

Karolina reaches across the dashboard to intertwine her fingers with Nico’s. “I see you, too.” 

**Author's Note:**

> i just wrote this in like 2 hours pls be kind it's not my usual writing style but i hope u liked it pls comment if you did <3
> 
> also can we PLEASE talk about how fine line is so applicable to deanoru because jesus i am completely feral over this album


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